Franklin's contribution to the North American post office consisted mainly, it would seem, in certain important ideas, the application of which turned a half century of failure into an immediate success. It is a commonplace that money spent in increased facilities to the public is sure of a speedy return with interest, and in private enterprises competition keeps this principle in fairly active employment.
This is not the case with an institution like the post office, until, at least, each new application of the principle had been justified by success. A post office is a monopoly, and at certain stages of its history that fact has been its bane. To-day when the demands of social and commercial intercourse make an efficient vehicle for the transmission of correspondence a necessity, the evils inherent in monopolies sink out of sight so far as the post office is concerned.
A peremptory public takes the place of competitors as a motive for alertness. The faults of the institution are freely exposed, and correction insisted upon; and, what is as much to the point, the public contributes of its ingenuity for the improvement of the service. When, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the British public was disgusted with the slowness of its mail carts, and dismayed at the number of robberies, Palmer, a Bath theatre manager, came forward with his scheme for the employment of fast passenger coaches for the conveyance of the mails.
A half century later the public united in a demand for lower postage rates; and Rowland Hill, a schoolmaster, produced a scheme, which for originality and efficacy, has given him a high place among the inventors of the world. To-day the Universal Postal Union affords a medium by means of which the results achieved by every postal administration are brought into a common stock for the benefit of all.
But when Franklin took hold of the North American post office, he had none of these aids to improvement. The measure of the public interest in the post office may be taken from the fact that its total revenue during the first three years of his administration, from 1753 to 1756, was £938 16s. 10d.—but little more than £300 a year.
As for encouragement or stimulus from the outside, there was none. The only connection the American post office had was with the home office; and it is doubtful whether, even if it had been disposed, the British post office could have lent any helpful advice in those days.
The British post office was at that time passing through one of its unprogressive periods. It had come to know by long years of observation what was the volume of correspondence which would be offered for exchange, and it provided the means of transmission, taking care that these should not cost more than the receipts.
Franklin's merit lay in his rising above an indolent reliance on his monopoly, and in his generous outlay for additional facilities, by means of which he not only drew to the post office a large amount of business, which was falling into other hands, but called into existence another class of correspondence altogether.
It is tolerably certain that had Franklin's work lay in England instead of America, he would have anticipated Palmer's suggestion that the stage coaches be used for the conveyance of the mails, instead of the wretched mail carts which came to be regarded as the natural prey of the highwayman.
At the beginning of 1764 the post riders between New York and Philadelphia made three trips a week each way; and at such a rate of speed that a letter could be sent from one place to the other and the answer received the day following.[49] In reporting this achievement to the general post office, Franklin states that the mails travel by night as well as by day, which had never been done before in America.